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NARR: Thomas is a burly man who spends up to 12 hours a day standing on a corner near Times Square.
ACT: THOMAS (:03) Spare change? It's cold out here.
NARR: This has been Thomas' life for a long time.
ACT: THOMAS (:15): Panhandling? On and off since 1971. Somedays I make money, somedays I don't make money.
NARR: Along with the cold, there are other perils. Thomas says he's been arrested at least once for every year he's been out on the streets. The last time was just a few months ago.
ACT: THOMAS (:19): Well I was sitting here in this spot, and I was flashing my sign, and a cop told me to move, so, okay I moved, I went across the street, stood there, started flashing my sign, and he came up and collared me. Cuffed me and stuffed me.
NARR: Thomas was arrested on the charge of public loitering for the purpose of begging. But it turns out arrests like these are actually illegal in New York City, ever since a federal judge ruled in 1992 that panhandling was constitutionally protected under the First Amendment right to free speech.
ACT: ROSENFIELD (:16) Almost all of the people we believe who were arrested under this loitering section for panhandling were people who would fall into the category of peacefully standing on the street holding out a cup and asking for change, which is something that the First Amendment protects their right to do.
NARR: That's Katherine Rosenfield, a lawyer who noted that city officials have already acknowledged that such arrests continued under the old, unconstitutional law. That mistake has already cost the city a big chunk of change.
Three months ago, the city agreed to pay one panhandler $100,000 after he sued them for over 20 such arrests. Rosenfield was that panhandlers lawyer, and this month, her firm began a class action lawsuit.
ACT: ROSENFIELD (:11): We learned that there it was a much more widespread problem and that there were thousands of people who had this happen to them, many of them who went through the entire system and pled guilty to this crime without knowing in fact that was not a crime.
NARR: The law does allow police to arrest panhandlers if they are acting aggressively or violently. But violent behavior apparently wasn't why most panhandlers were arrested. Public defenders say the law was overlooked for so long in part because of an overburdened justice system. Homeless advocate Jean Rice describes what it was like for him to go through the system…
ACT: RICE: (:13): And then you get a court appointed attorney and he tells you, hey look I got 130 cases that I got to deal with and you're number 128. When you come out to see the judge, it's a done deal.
NARR: The Bronx District Attorney, whose office presided over several of the cases in the lawsuit, has acknowledged his office had been improperly prosecuting panhandlers. And there actually seems to be little dispute - from the city itself, from panhandlers, or from lawyers - that the system failed on every level to uphold the law. Rosenfield says the problem started…
ACT: ROSENFIELD (13 sec): …with the police on the street who were arresting people for the violations, through the district attorney's office who were prosecuting people for it and onto the judge who were permitting people to accept pleas.
NARR: The real question now is how much the city will have to pay out for preventing panhandlers from getting their fair share of the what's in people's pockets. But the threat of the class action lawsuit has already spurred major changes. The NYPD says it will provide its officers new training on what the law says. District Attorneys are swearing that old practices won't continue. And people like Thomas are dreaming big dreams, of real change.
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ACT: THOMAS (:13) I don't know how much the lawsuit is, but if it's over 10, 20 million or something like that, I'll just settle out for 32,000, fine with me, I'll see you later, I'm off to Wyoming, man…
SOC: This is Sitara Nieves for Columbia radio news.
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